Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Light and Shade

THE EVERYDAY

73Detritus found in books: aSlip of paper stuck in Paul Gauguin’s Intimate Journals, a beat-Up 1958 paperback edition, identifyingOne Anna Kuchta of HaggertyRoad, b. 1939, a blond.On the flyleaf: Detroit, 1960(Traveled to Europe with me).Underlined: Nail up some indecencyTo be rid of respectablePeople and Only the sign-Painter copies—how is itSuch earnest impieties a half-Century old and so eagerly Wrought ought distress me so?It’s not unlike Father HopkinsTransliterating the woodlark’s mischievous song “Teevo cheevo cheevio chee,” makingA bird out of nothing,A beeswax’d encaustic of noiseLaid down with a palette Knife directly, with merest hintOf permanence, that color. Anna Kuchta in black and white,A smudged rotogravure, a plateUnsliced of its binding, unleaving “Like the things of man.” Abandon’d is the definition ofA thing, motility the bruit’dAbout lack it sounds like A pistol shot ripping throughA coal mine, or wild Laughter big as a circus Tent in a tornado, everyday’sConstancy moving along with aTicket to leave one behind.

Stay’d up for the returns and the speeches and the colossally jubilant Grant Park crowds—recall’d the police riot there, the Chicago of 1968. Tears of disbelief and gratitude, relief and joy versus lacrymogènes in canisters—how impossibly different.